


Entrées

by calerine



Series: Compliments to the Chef [1]
Category: Arashi (Band), Japanese Actor RPF, V6
Genre: Alcohol, Food, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-12 08:25:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3349979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calerine/pseuds/calerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The first time Nino meets Jun.</p>
          </blockquote>





	1. Onsen-tamago and smashed avocado on toast

Jun finds what he's looking for after he quits school.

He never even knew he was searching until, standing side by side at their kitchen sink after dinner one night, his sister had asked him "have you ever thought about cooking?" It was a throwaway comment but she made it sound like Jun had not been talking about it for months; his business management course feeling increasingly like dead weight than life buoy.

Jun had furrowed his brows, immediately defensive and surprised in equal measure by the unexpected turn of conversation. "What's wrong with wanting to run a business? Our parents brought us up doing just that."

So used to his teenage cantankerousness, Megumi wasn't even looking at him when she said, "you've always been the least tetchy when you're cooking."

"So what you're saying is I'm always tetchy," Jun had retorted, not wanting to start a fight but somehow feeling that the moment had to be handled carefully, like something important was happening and he had to say something good because it would be remembered in twenty years. Thing was, he couldn't think past the absolute _rightness_ in his bones when he pictured himself in a busy commercial kitchen. It didn’t even matter if he ended up washing dishes in one for five years; he needed the bustle and the constant flux, he needed to be somewhere _creating_ something worth existing.

"That's exactly what I mean," Megumi had replied as she pulled her dripping arms from the water and did jazz hands so violent that they made Jun wet too. "Think about it - you know I'm right.”

Because Jun was an adult, he stuck out his tongue at her.

But breakfast the next day - an [onsen egg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onsen_tamago), orange yolk poached to perfection, balanced on smashed avocado on toast, with sliced spring onions and grated radish on tofu - was all the words Jun couldn’t let out of his throat.


	2. Chocolate Forest Floor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time Nino meets Jun.

The first time Nino met Jun, he was helping Eikura and Becky assemble a [croquembouche](http://tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/masterchef/recipes/croquembouche-2014) that had clearly set its sights on being bigger than all three of them put together. Everyone else was either packing up or leaving for home; Eikura had pulled a cardigan over her whites and Becky’s hair had already been let down from the netting.

It was clear that Jun was the one least sure of what he was doing even though he was wearing the biggest hat and the dirtiest whites in the kitchen.

“This is Matsumoto Jun, our Chef de cuisine. I’m sure you’ve heard about him; he’s something of a celebrity in these parts,” Inohara-san had said, grinning in a way that implied that he liked to teased Matsumoto about it and that the man himself hated it.

Then Matsumoto had looked up sharply. He proceeded to dust himself off even though it did little to dislodge the flour and icing sugar that stuck to his ink-black hair. It looked like it’d been styled some time in its long distant past. Now it drooped, all greasy and messy from service and - Matsumoto ran his fingers through it absently - probably that too.

One took note of these things when they lived with Aiba Masaki.

“I’m sorry we had to get you to come in this late at night. The restaurant has been very busy,” he said striding over to take Nino’s hand in a firm grip. For a long moment, Matsumoto’s eyes ran down the length of Nino’s small figure, thoroughly assessing.

Nino found himself suddenly wide-awake.

“It’s no trouble at all, I’ve heard about your work,” he replied. His mind immediately conjured up an image of Matsumoto’s [Chocolate Forest Floor](http://tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/masterchef/recipes/chocolate-forest-floor), tempered chocolate branches on a soft bed of mousse, snapping under the pressure of his spoon as he’d pushed all the other elements to the side of his plate to _see_. Now - _again,_ he could smell the dense moisture in the air, feel dry leaves rustling underfoot and chase the sharp tang of lavender cream with the tip of his tongue. It was if he were at the same time foraging for bamboo shoots in the mountains and in his grandmother’s kitchen, drinking hot tea on an early spring morning as the fog rolling in from Tokyo Bay misted the window panes.

“What did you think?” Jun ask, his tone neutral. The clock on the wall behind his head read 12.05 a.m. and the night felt entirely too surreal to be happening. All those sounds of a kitchen winding down, cutlery clinking, pans being washed, Ohno-san asking someone about the night’s [beurr blanc](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beurre_blanc) sauce, and Eikura oiling the inside of the croquembouche cone so scattered conversation was interspersed by metal scraping styrofoam.

In Nino’s head, they had all turned warped and muffled.

So he had run with it, inhaled enormously and said, “When I first had it I thought for a moment you were there all the times I couldn’t sleep and watched the sun come up over the harbour from my grandparents’ house in Katsushika.”

Behind his back, Nino clenched his fists, his heartbeat was a mile a minute.

Something behind Matsumoto’s expression shifted, a flicker of his eyes and then he was nodding determinedly. “Will you be able to come tomorrow to cook for me and Watanabe-san? She is standing in for the position of sous chef at the moment, although she is our saucier. You may use our kitchen’s ingredients of course.”

“What do you enjoy eating?” Nino asked, already going through all his favourite recipes - all of _Aiba’s_ favourite recipes. _Perhaps_ -

“Do as you wish,” Matsumoto seemed to relax. “Our restaurant specialises in French and Japanese cuisine but Anne-san and I are not picky eaters.”

Later after Inohara walked Nino out of the front doors, he stopped on the sidewalk.

“You’re going to get it, Matsujun hasn’t let anybody go this far and we’ve already been holding interviews for two months.” He shook his fists hearteningly at the stretch of dark street before them. “Just - FOLLOW your heart!”

“Don’t worry,” Nino shook Inohara’s hand, reminded strangely of Aiba. He bowed, already unravelling memories of his grandmother’s [_dobin mushi_](http://steamykitchen.com/6015-matsutake-mushroom-dobin-mushi-recipe.html). Perhaps the depth of that clear _dashi_ , its ringing notes of _matsutake_ mushrooms and fresh shrimp could be paired with the sweet caramel of Aiba’s mother’s _[saikyozuke](http://www.bento.com/trt-saikyozuke.html),_ and then _onigiri_ , [grilled](http://www.justonecookbook.com/recipes/yaki-onigiri-grilled-rice-ball/) with sesame seeds and a light touch of yuzu. “I know just the thing.”


	3. Cold beer and hot takoyaki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When he is 23, Aiba becomes even more grateful for school holidays.

When he is 23, Aiba becomes even more grateful for school holidays.

It's 2006 and Nino's studying at Tsuji in Osaka. He shuttles back and forth from Tokyo to Osaka during the school term, eight hours each way on the night bus to save money. Some weekends, he's at his grandparents but then others, Nino's at the Aibas'; letting himself in by the back door at two in the morning, crawling into the futon that Aiba set up on his bedroom floor before he fell asleep. And in the morning, Aiba sidesteps Nino's sprawled limbs to make rush hour, fighting fond feelings till his train pulls into Tokyo station.

They hardly see each other anymore, and when they do, one of them is near incoherent with exhaustion. Well, apart from that one time Aiba called in sick to take the _shinkansen_ all the way to Osaka and found Nino's hostel by the return address on his letter, characters all squished together and barely legible. Nino'd snuck Aiba into his lecture. Instead of finishing up work like he'd planned to, Aiba found himself knowing a lot more about Chinese food the way _Chinese people_ ate it by the end of the hour. Then, they'd sat pressed together in Nino's regular _takoyaki_ place, tucked into a small booth, folded into each other like Nino's _kanji_ , his leg over Aiba's knee. They talked with mouths full of steam, sipped each other's cold beers. Then burning their tongues on the taste of spring onions, bonito flakes and mayonnaise, Nino had knocked their elbows together the very same moment Aiba opened his mouth to show him the largest piece of _tako_ in possibly the history of grilled- _anything_.

Aiba's been so used to having Nino by his side that the year feels like it's inching by slower than all the other twenty two years before it.

Aiba _misses_ him. He does it with a ferocity that surprises even himself. He misses having Nino near; several train stations away, in the next town, in his house, in his bedroom, his belly on Aiba's futon, warm from dinner, his legs in the air as they read _Shounen Jump!_ Between one meeting and the next, between _yes, Sir! Thank you Sir_ s, Aiba sends Nino irrelevant emojis while he collates coffee orders. All of a sudden, he's wondering what Nino would say if he knew Yokoyama-kun took two shots of whipped cream with his coffee. Nino always replies hours later, with his shopping list and the new game level he's about to unlock. Aiba imagines him, hunched figure tiny in the ebbing crowd, his face half hidden in his scarf and cheeks warmed on every exhale.

His mother calls them 'the twins that she never had'.

Aiba opens his clunky work laptop and counts all the ways that Osaka is too far from Chiba.

His internship works him to the bone. Everyone has a coffee order and Tanaka-san smiles like Aiba's done such good work just by getting all of them right. There are email instructions, last week's articles for him to analyse, and this week's news for him to draft. Aiba grits his teeth, gives and gives and gives until all he has left is the last train home with a _karaage ekiben_ balanced over his knees, cold rice and congealed chicken clammy in his mouth.

By now he's learnt that journalism isn't exactly glam and fortune. ("The news waits for no one!" he likes to say, and tell himself under his breath when rooftops are bathed in gold, and his head's filled with so many words he could throw open his windows and watch them clatter onto the narrow streets.)

In the winter, school holidays bring reprieve. The chilly sea breeze whistles through Hanamigawa, sings into salt-tinged air, and sweeps Nino stumbling and pink-cheeked, over the restaurant threshold, into Aiba's arms. In the span of a night, he's no longer the width of Japan away but _right there_ \- pushing his toes into Aiba's space, stealing every bit of warmth Aiba willingly gives up and every bit that he pretends not to.

Summer, and Aiba stays up late listening to the calls of cicadas while his eyes hurt from the glare of his computer screen. He wakes up too early to join the crowd of salary men and office ladies converging into Tokyo. Every other moment of free time, he's down in the kitchen, watching Nino serve up bowls of egg drop soup and century egg congee over barley tea and _tsukumen_ , tracing along the grain of the table with his fingernails, desperate just to be near.

Aiba catches on very quickly, that there is nothing like coming home to Nino, yawning in the kitchen or asleep on his bedroom floor, arm thrown haphazardly over his open mouth, drool a patch on the worn pillowcase. It's soothing, familiar in all the right ways and different in all the ways that Aiba doesn't quite mind. Nino's school bag, stained with beetroot and cooking oil, always rests next to his head, like he's so used to long journeys and sharing his space that he can't bear to have his things any further away. Aiba likes to imagine him fumbling up the stairs and sliding open Aiba's door by habit alone, his bare feet soft on the tatami and his skinny shoulders sinking into the futon.

Now Nino stirs, blinks slowly and squints. He finds Aiba's eyes in the dim light of the streetlamps outside, swallows thickly, seeking out the shapes of _what time is it?_ and W _elcome home?_

Aiba drops his bag, folds into that space between Nino and his bed and drowns in a relief he has not known before.


End file.
